Our Five-Year Plan

Now listen, you who say, “Today or tomorrow we will go to this or that city, spend a year there, carry on business and make money.” Why, you do not even know what will happen tomorrow. What is your life? You are a mist that appears for a little while and then vanishes. (James 4:13-14, NIV)

As you can imagine, I receive newsletters—both hard copy and digital—from several churches on a regular basis. This week I received one online that invited me to click on a link and view the church’s Five-Year Plan. So I did.

I was impressed by the Purpose Statement and Guiding Principles identified. These were Kingdom-oriented and life-giving. The themes identified were clearly based on conversation and dialogue within the congregation. But then I turned to the goals.

Let me be perfectly transparent here: Goals written with a horizon of over a year are useless. Here’s why.

In the next year, we may face an economic recession. We may be faced with another worldwide pandemic. The war in Ukraine may spread across the region to other countries and add more refugees to our population. New technologies may emerge that will change how we relate to each other. Underserved populations may become more aggressive in seeking change.

Now, we don’t want most of those things to happen, do we? But they may. And then, what will this church have? I nice strategic plan that was based on the way things were rather than on reality.

I know several organizations—including churches—that have invested significant time, talent, and resources in recreating five-year plans that quickly became outdated because of reality.

Call me a skeptic? Sat that I lack faith? OK, but I think we would be better served to be agile, stay in touch with what is happening in our context, and listen to what the Spirit is saying in real time. What would God have us do in the next six months that will further the emergence of the Kingdom of God? What is God doing right now that we should seek to discern? What has God already prepared us to do?

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